


Presence of an Absence

by RubyBakeneko



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending (Implied), Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence (referenced), Dreams and Nightmares, Episode: s03e04 Aperitivo, M/M, Masturbation, Murder Family, Season/Series 03, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 08:35:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10658886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyBakeneko/pseuds/RubyBakeneko
Summary: As Will prepares to leave for Europe, a series of dreams and imagined conversations help him to engage with different dimensions of loss. Slowly, he comes to a deeper understanding of what he feels for Hannibal—and what Hannibal may feel for him.





	Presence of an Absence

**Author's Note:**

> This is set sometime around s03e04 ('Aperitivo'). Given the non-linear narrative of the first half of season 3, that means there's actually canon divergence from the start of s03e02 ('Primavera') onward. Although it's arguable that Will needed the events of season 3 to happen, I wanted to imagine a Will who was able to confront the love question earlier in the timeline (say, before skull sawing and extended prison stays came into the equation). I haven't written anything for a while and so I feel a bit rusty, but I would love to get back to writing more regularly.

Stuck in an exhausting type of purgatory, Will's imagination churns out endless permutations of the night Hannibal left. Sometimes it forces him to relive every excruciating detail of their mutual betrayal, blood spurting from Abigail's neck and tears staining Hannibal's face. At other times, his mind teases him with glimpses of a world in which they sit together on a plane, lulled by the hum of the engines as the daughter they chose sits living and breathing between them.

When Will is released from hospital, the echo of Abigail travels to Wolf Trap with him. She is dressed in shades of vivid turquoise, a pretty contrast to her sleek brown hair. 

"I know where he'll be," Will tells her as they cross the threshold. He moves cautiously, still mindful of his healing abdomen.

"Of course you do," she says. "And we should go. We have to find out how it ends."

"Do we?"

"Don't you want to be reunited with your family?"

Will laughs, the noise brittle and humorless. "My 'family' sliced us open and left us for dead."

"Because you lied."

"Yes, because I lied. Still, there's something so fatalistic and _masochistic_ about being willing to return to... that."

"To him," Abigail corrects gently.

Will says nothing in response and Abigail vanishes with the sunlight. He knows she'll be back, but he also knows she is merely a vessel for a memory and a wish.

He is haunted by thoughts of the life the three of them will never share, and his yearning follows him into his dreams each night. His subconscious adds layers of color and detail to his vision of what might have been, all variations on a simple theme. He often sees Abigail and Hannibal walking with him down cobbled streets, a buzz of foreign accents around them, but what hurts most of all is the vague impression of shared laughter and a giddy flood of contentment he has rarely ever felt.

No matter what he sees in his dreams, Will is always with both of them—Abigail and Hannibal, his self-made family. That is what he is grieving, he tells himself. That is _all_ he is grieving. 

He is not ready to think about anything else.

—

The first time Will dreams of Hannibal without the protective buffer of Abigail's presence, it cracks something open inside him and he wakes to a devastating emptiness. He sits up in bed, anguished, pressing his palms hard against his temples as though he can forcibly squeeze Hannibal out of his skull. 

Something has shifted now, and Will finds the two of them are alone together whenever he sleeps. It's often surreal, all twisting antlers and rivers of blood, and a sense of being more beast than man as his teeth tears through flesh. But there are also moments when it is agonizingly _real_ —just Hannibal sitting opposite him, cross-legged and deceptively placid as they talk about the meaning of life and death, power and sacrifice. When the real world creeps in to fray his dreams at the edges, he is worn out and queasy, almost as though only half of him still lives inside his body. 

The day Jack visits, Will gives voice to what he has known on some level for a long time: he had wanted to run away with Hannibal. He had wanted this, wanted to preserve that irreplaceable company and kinship, before he ever knew it could have been possible to take Abigail with them. At the sound of his admission, Will can feel the disapproval and incredulity rolling off Jack in waves.

"Not everyone can understand what we shared with him," Abigail says by way of consolation, a hand on his shoulder. Will leans into her invisible touch.

—

Will's dreams escalate relentlessly, and with an insidious influx of intimacy. First there is Hannibal's hand low on his back, guiding him through the door of their home in an unfamiliar city. Soon after, there is the barest graze of fingers across his knuckles as Hannibal hands him a book, a gesture too casual to be accidental. Then there is the tickle of warm breath raising the hair on his neck as Hannibal stands behind him on their balcony. 

"Beautiful," Hannibal says, ostensibly about the panoramic view, snow-capped mountains majestic in the distance. Will flushes at the heat of Hannibal’s body, close but not touching.

He doesn't know—or doesn't want to know—what to call the ache that tugs at him when he is hauled back to his banal reality, but the feeling sits heavy in his rib cage like a fist squeezing his heart.

Time becomes strangely fluid, hours blurring as Will dreads sleep by day and loses himself to it by night. Eventually, the Hannibal in his dreams finally kisses him. Both shocking and inevitable at once, it is incongruously gentle—a tentative, nuzzling brush of soft lips. Will feels his body responding, feels his own lips parting, warmth flooding through his veins and seeping into his bones.

"Come upstairs with me," Hannibal urges, his voice low and full of promise.

Will jolts awake feeling ashamed and somehow exposed, self-loathing rising like bile. It is getting light outside when he dares to go back to bed, numbed by a large glass of whisky and the gnawing pull of exhaustion.

—

He tries convincing himself that this is not what it seems, because _how could it be_ what it seems. Perhaps, he thinks, his brain is just symbolically processing the temptation to succumb to the seductive symbiosis Hannibal once offered. Perhaps the dreams are a manifestation of the part of him that has always longed to get lost in that unity. 

These superficially comforting rationalizations are fragile, crumbling in the face of what he sees and feels when he falls asleep. Demanding hands hold onto his hips and he writhes beneath the sharp pleasure of a clever mouth sucking a pattern of bruises down his chest. It's worse still when Hannibal offers only grandiose endearments and feather-light touches, subjecting Will’s body to rapturous worship.

He is often painfully aroused when he wakes, and he gasps and sweats through self-flagellating orgasms that are intended to purge Hannibal from his system like a sickness. He is desperate to empty himself of this useless, poisonous longing so that he won't have to look at it anymore. Focusing in on the sensation that is the least like affection and the most like brutal hunger, he lets the things he craves play out behind tightly closed eyelids. One morning, he instinctively curls his left hand around his throat as he comes, imagining the burn of Hannibal's grip. On another occasion, he bites into his arm as he fucks into his fist and thinks of clawing welts across Hannibal's skin. He tries stretching himself open with invasive thrusts of his fingers and he pulls at his hair hard enough to truly hurt sometimes, but after the blinding rush of release and the catharsis of honesty fade he finds the empty ache still remains.

Will maintains this pattern of obsessive torture for weeks, strung out and drained as he balances on the edge of the most frightening kind of self-knowledge. Ultimately, it is unsustainable, and he sinks to the tiled floor of his shower as scalding water beats down on him. The physical desire isn't the problem, he begins to accept. The problem is that he is terrified—not of his latent capacity for violence or of his evolving sexuality, but of the tenderness that has quietly been growing in him all along. 

—

"I miss him," Will tests the words out loud, alone in his kitchen. 

Abigail appears by the sink, poised and serene in a pale yellow sweater. The afternoon sun highlights the scar that snakes across her neck.

"What will happen when you see him again?" she asks. "What will you do?"

"I can't say that I know."

There's a pause as she studies his face. "You're different. He changed you more than you knew, and not just in the ways you expected."

"We changed each other."

"Love will do that," Abigail says plainly. 

Will flinches. "It's not as simple as that. Someone like Hannibal... it's not _in him_. Surely it's not."

"Isn't it?"

"Some might say love and stabbing are mutually exclusive," Will snipes, but there's no bite to it.

Abigail rolls her eyes. "Not exactly a conventional declaration, I'll give you that." 

Will huffs out a laugh at the comic absurdity of his life, moving over to lean against the counter with her.

"You broke his heart," Abigail says, serious and quiet now. "That proves there is still one there to break. I don't think he really knew what to do with that fact, and I don't think you do either. But what is it, if it isn't love?"

They stand in silence for a moment, side by side.

"It feels… grotesque and raw sometimes, like an open wound," Will says eventually. 

"Love can be as ugly as it is beautiful."

"It's not what I thought I wanted."

"Well, it's what you got," Abigail says with a wry smile. "And don't you want to know what happens next?"

Will doesn't answer, but he reaches down to take Abigail's hand in his.

—

That night, he dreams Hannibal is inside him, pinning his wrists above his head and murmuring into his ear as their bodies move together. Will is alight with pleasure, his skin singing everywhere it is touched. He feels utterly whole for one perfect moment, a sharp gasp catching in his throat as he pulls his hands free and reaches up to wrap his arms around the width of Hannibal's back. He begs to be fucked harder, deeper, as if Hannibal might somehow be able to crawl into the heart of him and never leave. When he comes, he cries out against Hannibal's mouth and feels the answering tremble in Hannibal's limbs as he finds his own release.

They lie facing each other in the dim light, no sound but their gradually slowing breath.

"I forgive you," Will whispers. "I'll find you."

"And I will wait for you," Hannibal replies, his fathomless gaze calm and steady as he leans forward to press a kiss to Will's forehead.

Will wakes to find tears wetting his cheeks.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m also [rubybakeneko](https://rubybakeneko.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Come and say hi any time! And [here's the link to this story on tumblr, should you feel inclined to share it](https://rubybakeneko.tumblr.com/post/159867206950/presence-of-an-absence-rubybakeneko-hannibal%22). Thanks for reading!


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